1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for supporting the fault diagnosis of an industrial installation, and an associated device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Here and hereinafter the term industrial installation relates, in particular, to a process engineering or industrial engineering installation from the field of the chemical industry, beverage and food engineering, environmental technology, pharmaceutical industry or gas and oil industry.
An (industrial) installation of this type generally comprises a multiplicity of individual installation components interconnected with one another. In this case, typical installation components of an industrial or process engineering installation are containers, reactors, pipelines, fittings, etc. In the course of a production process, starting materials, i.e., fluids, pass through the components, with the starting materials being changed/processed to form a resultant product.
Process or operating parameters are usually assigned to the individual installation components. In this case, such a process parameter describes a state of the respective installation component, or of the fluid to be processed in the installation component, which is normally variable in the course of the process. Such process parameters are, firstly, in particular, a temperature, a pressure, a flow rate or a mass flow of the fluid that corresponds thereto. Secondly, however, such an operating parameter can also describe a setting associated with the respective installation component, for example, a valve position (“open”, “closed”, “partly closed”) or a pump capacity or an assigned rotation speed.
Hereinafter, the abovementioned process parameters are differentiated into two groups, i.e., into observable (metrologically detected) process parameters and those which are not observable.
Observable process parameters are usually represented (at least partly) on a control diagram in a control or process control room of the industrial installation. In this case, the control diagram often shows a schematic, usually a simplified flow diagram of the installation. In this case, the control diagram comprises a plurality of “control objects”, where each control object is respectively assigned to an installation component. In this case, a control object serves to represent current operating data (i.e., actual, setpoint and actuating values of an observable process parameter) of the installation component. If a fault occurs during the operation of the installation, as a result of which a process parameter deviates from a predefined setpoint value by more than a specific alarm threshold, then an alarm is usually output (graphically) by the control object.
However, it is often very difficult and correspondingly time-consuming to find, and thus to be able to rectify, a fault cause based on such an alarm, on account of the usually very high complexity of the installation and the incompleteness of such a control diagram. However, a fault cause that is identified too late can result in production losses, for which reason early identification of a fault cause is desirable.